Whatever topic Wright addresses, the lynchpin of his work, following the lead of Dummett, is the 'Realism/Anti-Realism' dispute. Wright painstakingly explores the nature and implications of adopting intuitionist logic and anti-realist semantics and has succeeded in sharpening the debate in many ways. He has not confined his attention to technical semantical and logical issues, but, going beyond attention to global realism and global anti-realism, has explored the past, other minds, etc., in the light of this overarching approach.

Meaning, for Wright, must respect quasiverifîcationist constraints: the notion of truth deployed in a theory of meaning should not and cannot transcend possible evidence. Whilst addressing similar issues to those Dummett considers, Wright is suspicious of semantic monism (a theory of meaning using a single key-concept such as truth or assertability) and of seeing the Principle of Bivalence as crucial to acceptance/rejection of realism.

In the philosophy of mathematics Wright broke with Dummett's reading of Frege and gave some defence of Frege's 'Platonism' whilst rejecting his 'realism', doctrines Dummett tied together. Wright has succeeded in helping Dummett force philosophers to reconsider their perhaps unthinking realism and to shift the axis of attention to metaphysics in a semantical direction. His work, notwithstanding the difficulty of the subject matter, has increasingly attracted high approbation. Sources: WW 1993; Univ. of St Andrews Philosophy Dept.

A Wilhelm Wundt archive, established by his daughter in his house at Grossbothen, was transferred to the Psychological Institute of the University of Leipzig on her death and is administered by the Institute.

Secondary literature:

Boring, E.G. (1950) A History of Experimental Psychology, second edition, New York: Prentice Hall, pp. 318-47.

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